Worst players of all time: How many are Mariners?

Mario Mendoza was good at blowing bubbles, bad at hitting. (seattlepi.com file)

Eric Nusbaum of the brilliant baseball blog Pitchers & Poets has undertaken the seemingly miserable task of ranking the 100 worst players in baseball history for Deadspin. Turns out, the task wasn’t as miserable as it sounds.

“In other words, while Rafael Belliard does appear below, nobody wants to read about 100 versions of him.”

Just because Nusbaum had a good time compiling doesn’t mean there aren’t some painful reminders for Mariners fans. There are 10 Mariners on the list. Ten! There’s also a Seattle Pilot. That’s a remarkable total for a game that has been played professionally since the mid-1800s by dozens and dozens of clubs. And the Mariners have only existed since 1977. (The Pilots played one season in 1969 before moving to Milwaukee.)

1. Mario Mendoza. No surprise here that the man whose name is synonymous with offensive futility tops the list, just edging out Bob Uecker. “His career average was .215 — making him the rare player for whom ‘lifetime .215 hitter’ means he was better than you thought,” Nusbaum writes.

Steve Balboni was good at hitting home runs, and not much else. (seattlepi.com file)

21. Steve Balboni. “Bye Bye” Balboni was a home run hitter. “But Balboni hit them at the expense of literally everything else: singles, doubles, triples, walks, sacrifice flies, sacrifice bunts, everything,” Nusbaum writes. He hit 21 homers in 97 games for Seattle during part of the 1988 season.

22. Brian L. Hunter. Summary: Great athlete, bad baseball player.

27. Doug Strange. This is a tough one for Mariners fans, because Strange is indirectly responsible for one of the greatest moments in team history. Strange drew a bases-loaded walk in Game 5 of the 1995 American League Division Series to tie the game, which was eventually won when Edgar Martinez’s double in the bottom of the 11th inning scored Joey Cora from third base and Ken Griffey Jr. from first. “It takes a bad hitter to look back on his own career and say that he’s glad he didn’t ruin everything by trying to hit,” Nusbaum writes.

56. Mike Kekich. Kekich was primarily a reliever for the inaugural Mariners in 1977 and he retired after the season. His 4.59 ERA is not great but not awful. However, he’s better remembered for trading families with Yankees teammate Fritz Peterson in 1972.

Somewhere, Bobby Ayala is about to blow a save. (Getty Images)

63. Bobby Ayala. Nusbaum sums this pick up perfectly:

Bobby Ayala is on this list as a stand-in for every Mariners pitcher of the 1990s who wasn’t named Randy Johnson or Jamie Moyer. Ayala’s spectacular blown saves in big games were the volcanic eruptions of a bullpen that included fellow natural disasters like Heathcliff Slocumb, Omar Olivares, and Bob Wells.

64. Jose Offerman. Offerman played just 29 games for the Mariners in 2002, but “as a child in Los Angeles, I associated defensive lapses in baseball with Jose Offerman,” Nusbaum writes.

68. Ray Oyler. Oyler is the only Pilot on the list, and boy was he bad. The shortstop had a career .175 batting average in six seasons and he hit .165 in 106 games for Seattle. Pilots fans started the Ray Oyler S.O.C.I.T.TO.M.E .300 Club, which stood for “slugger Oyler can, in time, top our manager’s estimate” by hitting .300.

70. Dan Meyer. Meyer was an original Mariner and lasted five seasons in Seattle, hitting 64 homers during that span. But the first baseman/third baseman/outfielder never produced the kind of numbers expected out of those positions. “He twice hit 20 home runs in a season,” Nusbaum writes. “But Meyer was more like a movie set version of a player. At first glance all the pieces were in place, but a closer look reveals only a façade.”

72. Willie Bloomquist. The Bremerton native was beloved as a Mariner, but he never really did much on the field to earn that devotion. He is a utility player in the truest sense, playing every position except pitcher and catcher, but his WAR (wins above replacement player) is 0.8. “Willie Bloomquist is the definition of replaceable,” Nusbaum writes.

79. Kevin Jarvis. Jarvis lasted as a major league pitcher for 13 seasons despite a 6.02 ERA. He makes the list for his ability to be so bad yet stick around for so long. Jarvis appeared in eight games for the Mariners in 2004, posting a 8.31 ERA.